


Face

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:58:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Bobby haven't quite hit the balance of being ready to be together at the same time.</p><p>Implied mentions of sexual assault from the Cage (no details).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Face

It's pretty obvious something's wrong with Sam, but they don't know what. He seems human, as far as Bobby can tell, just...different. Something's missing, but something _new_ is there too. He seems more open, less filtered, more confident. And damn if it doesn't make Bobby's "boy" seem all grown up, seem independent and a little dangerous, the way he keeps observing and theorizing and shooting down his own theories aloud as quick as a blink.

Actually, it's kind of attractive, Bobby thinks with a hint of guilt. Sam was always attractive, of course, but something about his innocent little furrowed brow and big eyes had made admiring him seem inconceivable,  even while Bobby'd been conceiving of it. Now, Sam seems smooth as a pebble, all oddly precise and intellectual. He has an enthusiasm for their pursuit of knowledge that Bobby appreciates, even if some of Sam's phrasing is harsh, even if he seems sort of impulsive and sometimes, here and there, a little socially lost, almost childlike. But so very not like a child all the same. So jaded and lost, like a killer who does and doesn't know how to be better.

Bobby can't bring himself to mind it much when Sam starts fingering the ends of his hair idly as he reads off part of a script about Hell. He does care when the answer to Bobby's casual inquiry about Hell is just a simple shrug and an odd sort of smile. 

"Hell was like anywhere else, except sometimes there was pain. It didn't seem like it would end," Sam says. "It did though," he points out a moment afterward. "I'm back now."

Bobby frowns slightly at that. "What sort of pain?"

"All sorts of pain, I guess. Mind, body, soul." Sam laughs. "Bamboo under the fingernails, false realities, loved ones who turn on you, you turning on your loved ones," he teases, smiling slightly but also looking just a bit sad.

Bobby swallows.

"I liked the attention," Sam goes on, frowning slightly. "I liked being the most important thing in the Cage." 

A moment later, he catches Bobby's gaze again and smiles. "So. Werewolf on the half moon?"

Bobby swallows. "That it?" he finally asks.

Sam's eyes narrow, but in confusion more than anything else.

***

That wasn't it. Bobby's counting silver bullets and re-blessing the holy water when he jumps because Sam's just there, right behind him, like boundaries are something he forgot about too, and he starts to talk about it again.

"He knew I liked you."

Bobby stills, setting the rosary down, turning carefully, leaving as much distance as he can between Sam and himself. "Yeah?"

Sam nods. "He thinks you're kinda cute, like I do."

"The Devil?" Bobby murmurs quickly, hoping Sam's not talking about Lucifer, hoping Sam didn't say someone thought he was cute at all.

Sam's hand curls against his thigh. He eyes the side of Bobby's hat, down his cheek, to the side of his neck and his shoulder. 

"He put your face on. You know?"

"Sorry," Bobby says awkwardly.

"Hey, don't be." Sam comes alive again, nudges Bobby's shoulder with his hand. "If you'd have been there, you'd have stopped him. Wasn't your idea. Rules of the Cage, man."

Bobby tries to remember the blessing, but he gets distracted, wondering what Satan could have wanted with his face.

Bobby sucks in a quiet breath when Sam's larger hand closes around his own, holding the hand and the rosary alike and finishing up. 

Sam's gone before Bobby has time to respond, if he's even supposed to, allowed to, able to.

***

"It's over now, Bobby. It doesn't matter," Sam explains, looking like he really believes that. 

"But you remember it," Bobby says warily. "You remember it all, like...like Dean had." Sam had only been in the Cage a few weeks, but time seemed to go more slowly than in Dean's part of Hell, from what Sam had said. Bobby figures then that it's no wonder Lucifer cracked up, but he quietly vows to never let another soul know he sympathizes, especially not Sam.

"Not like Dean had. It...it isn't weighing on me. So, let's not weigh it," Sam says. He looks around at some of the new books on the desk, smiling absently. They have more lore than ever before, with the monsters all seeming to be taking trips abroad.

"Well, I want to," Bobby says defensively, then sighing and trying again. "I mean...I'm a little worried."

"That I'm gonna snap? Go all torture-happy?" He's grinning, but Bobby's not afraid. He's just concerned.

"I'm worried about what Satan did with my face."

There's a little twitch of the lips, then, a soberness arriving in Sam's gaze like the setting of humor's sun.

"Bobby," Sam warns. His hand reaches up, and Bobby lets it touch his face, lets the thumb rub his cheek, under his eye, lets knuckles brush against his ear.

"Hey," Sam says suddenly, patting Bobby's cheek. "Wanna go make out?"

Bobby can do nothing but gape at Sam for a moment. He's kind of annoyed, sure, but Sam's so oddly serious about it, and curious, and intent.

Without waiting for an answer, Sam leans in, and he's nearly there....

"Shit!" Bobby says, startled. He jerks back slightly, but Sam takes a step forward, and there's nothing between them but tension.

"You're creeping me out, kid," Bobby gasps.

"I'm actually a really good kisser," Sam says, nodding, like that's at all relevant. 

"Sam," says Bobby slowly. "I have a knife in my pocket. I am not afraid to use it to get you to back the hell away from me."

Sam backs the hell away, backs the Hell away, and it's just Bobby when he hears rather than sees Sam go out the front door. 

***

Sam's drunk. Bobby isn't surprised, but he's not pleased, but he's not displeased either. He's just concerned, again.

"Hey, do you think I'm pretty?" this new, strangely uninhibited Sam calls, ducking close as Bobby looks up from his seat at the book-blanketed desk with his hand on the phone at his ear.

"I'm gonna have to call you back," Bobby says. "I'll find the answer, ASAP."

Everything's too quiet then.

"I think you do. I'll do anything you want, you know."

"Anything?" asks Bobby quickly. "Anything at all?"

"Yeah. Since I've been back...sex is just...." He makes a soft, pleased noise, apparently no word in his big vocabulary precise enough. 

"So, come on. Me, you, your bed?" Sam asks when Bobby takes a moment to consider his word choice.

"What I want is a straight answer, Sam."

Sam turns around, away. "Why?" he asks, sounding hurt for the first time since Bobby hugged him goodbye for what he thought would be the last time.

"I want to make sure we'll be okay. You...you didn't come onto me back then. Before the Cage."

"You were just too stupid to notice," Sam corrects. He sounds more normal, more...emotionless. 

"Hm." It's been known to happen, Bobby has to admit.

"You won't even kiss me if I tell you."

Bobby's breath catches. He imagines kissing Sam, fully lets himself. It'd probably be nice. He bets Sam's a real wildcat in the sack. 

But that's not what this is about. And if Sam thinks he won't wanna kiss him, if Sam thinks he might want to now but that that'd be a permanent "no" if he knew the truth, Bobby sort of _needs_ to know, because he didn't think anything, even starting the Apocalypse and saying yes to Lucifer, could make him not kind of want to kiss Sam, if the stars all aligned, or whatever.

"I'll kiss you. Once. Then you'll tell me what's up."

Sam slowly turns around. He steps back, letting Bobby get up out of the chair he'd been sitting in for too long. After extricating himself and giving an involuntary yawn, Bobby stretches his neck, rolls his shoulders.

Sam's hands cup his face, both of them, something soft in his touch and his gaze that's as thin and hard to pinpoint as a ghost in a world with no EMF readers.

The brush of lips is deliberate, catching, full of Sam's cautious breaths and Bobby's beard, full of Sam's two hands and their cradling. 

Full of another brush, a repositioning, a slow suckle of Bobby's lower lip. A precision-borne bite with teasing softness, the flutter of Sam's eyelids and an increase in the press of his hands, fingers scratching slightly at the back of Bobby's neck.

The warmth Bobby feels is one he he hadn't expected to feel from this new Sam. They eye each other as Sam pulls back to lick his own lips and challenge with his eyes just in case Bobby wants to offer more.

"Why'd you say Lucifer likes me?" Bobby just about purrs, letting Sam's fingers play at the back and sides of his neck to help ease some of the tension borne of too much sitting.

"I'm sorry to tell you this," Sam says, fingers rubbing, his expression somewhat apologetic, or trying to be. "He put your face on."

"I got that part," said Bobby, voice soft and pleased, feeling like he could just lean forward into Sam's arms and stay there a little while, in a more perfect world.

"And then," Sam said, leaning forward to whisper into Bobby's ear.

The hands that rubbed felt clammy, felt constricting, but Bobby was pretty well paralyzed by the things Sam was saying, by the sheer tide of revulsion swelling and pulling back and drawing Bobby toward the possibility of drowning in it, sand moving around him, out from underneath him, the sun hot and knowing.

Bobby reached up to grasp the wrists.

Sam paused. Pressing a careful kiss to Bobby's ear, he asked, "Didn't you, uh...want this?"

Bobby peeled the hands away from his face and neck, his eyes unable to meet Sam's, his face pale and full of trembling awareness.

"Then you understand why I can't," he said. His voice was rough, slightly defensive, but not an indicator that Sam should leave. Sam did go, though. He went away again, the strange new Sam.

***

But the Sam didn't stay away forever. Somehow, he brought Dean, even though they'd decided together that Dean didn't need two screw ups who only brought him cases and grief hanging around his neck.

In the end, Sam and Bobby probably liked Lisa even more than Dean had, by virtue of idealism and self-disgust.

Not that a soulless man found disgust to be easy. Because Sam had been soulless. But every word he'd almost sex-whispered into Bobby's ears about what the Cage had done to sexually twist Sam into a moral pretzel, if Sam really wanted Bobby after all that...sea, they must have been true.

With the wall, Sam didn't remember. But the wall didn't change what Bobby had heard, what he had pictured, vomited about, drank over, almost called Sam to discuss, lost a bunch of sleep over, kept firmly on the tip of his tongue instead of spilling dangerously out of his mouth.

And when Sam had been about to kill him, Bobby thought to himself that maybe it'd put an end to that awkwardness, wrap up the scene between them nicely, no matter the injustice of Bobby not having really done anything.

That just made things that much more awkward for Bobby when Dean had ended up saving him.

***

There came a day when Sam remembered. When Sam started doing half the things Bobby had done about it, maybe more than half.

"I shouldn't have told you," he finally said. "I know I wanted you to kiss me, and I know you asked, but I'm so, so sorry."

Bobby still wants to kiss him. He cups Sam's face gently, and the gesture is understood. The kiss isn't as good, but there's something healing about it.

***

When Bobby finally understands, or at least mostly does, is when he sits through Sams and Deans, millions of them, all with the same black eyes. When sometimes they chat, or sometimes they taunt him liberally, or sometimes they just stare. Because nothing in him blames the real Sam, when Sam rescues him.

Because he feels worthy of being rescued.

Because the kiss in Purgatory is short-lived, but the best one yet.

And Bobby wonders if they'll kiss in Heaven, if that's even allowed. 

And he wonders if he'll see Karen, and if she'll blame him for what happened, because he doesn't blame her for what she did while she was possessed, or for what she did in his dream, taunting him.

If his time with No Soul Sam taught him anything, it was that new rules weren't hard to learn, and that some things were supposed to remain a mystery until their proper time.


End file.
